Discovered by lane
Table of Contents
Anywhere Menu Glitch is a glitch that allows you to have limited control over your characters while in a menu screen or during a cutscene. It is the cornerstone glitch of all Unrestricted speedruns, and along with Save Buffering one of the two most widely used glitches in KotOR speedrunning.
The Anywhere Menu Glitch is performed by pressing Alt-F4 during a saving or loading screen. If loading, when the screen ends, the game can be unpaused by simply pressing the pause button. If saving, the player must open and close a menu, and then unpause. This allows you to move or perform other actions with the quit dialog still active.
AMG has a variety of uses across all of the Unrestricted routes. The most powerful use of AMG is enabling other major glitches, including:
Even beyond these glitches, there are other applications of AMG that are speedrun relevant, listed below.
The main use of AMG is to gain control during cutscenes. To do so:
Once you have cancelled the pop-up, you can no longer click through dialog lines or use number keys to select dialog options. You can use Quick Saves to progress through dialogs and the mouse to select dialog options; however, it is better to progress the cutscene to the appropriate point first, and then cancel the pop-up to gain control.
Once control is gained, you can either skip the cutscene, move during the cutscene, or access menus during the cutscene.
Cutscenes can be skipped via AMG by (quick) saving and loading, using an instant-use Force Power or item, or using Fast Transit (where enabled). The first of these is akin to a Save Buffer, the second is essentially a Force Skip, and the third an elaborate Map CS Skip.
It is important to note that this method is more flexible than a traditional Save Buffer, Force Skip, or Map CS Skip; those methods skip the cutscene at the beginning of a cutscene, whereas with AMG you can progress the cutscene to hit key dialog lines that set flags or modify game variables, and then skip the cutscene. Skipping cutscenes with AMG is also useful when saves are so long that Save Buffers are impractical.
The Force Skip method will only work if the party member casting the Force Power is the “speaker” for the conversation, as determined by the game’s code. This is the same reason that Force Skip and Soft Buffers only work for certain cutscenes.
Your party members will have either free or limited movement during cutscenes, depending on whether they are considered the “speaker” for the conversation by the game’s code. If they are not the speaker, they may move normally. If they are the speaker, they may only move if they have a melee weapon equipped and use the Flourish Weapon hotkey, which allows the party member to move for the duration of the weapon flourish.
Movement during cutscenes is made much easier by breaking the cutscene’s camera instructions, which can be done by using the Change Leader hotkey to swap between multiple party members, or pressing Free Look twice (which can be done with no party members).
Additional notes:
With the Quick Menu Buttons enabled to appear in the top right corner, one can use the mouse to click these buttons to access menus. The mouse movement for this is blind, as the cursor does not reappear while the cutscene is playing; this also applies inside the menu, so keyboard usage is recommended for these instances.
While this can theoretically be used to skip a cutscene through Fast Transit as described above, primarily this method is used to save or load a game during a cutscene, usually to begin a Hotshot.
Some cutscenes, mainly plot cutscenes that occur while traveling between planets, occur in special modules called STUNT modules. These cutscenes have scripted camera movements that control the length of the cutscene. A Free Look AMG can skip these cutscenes as follows:
Cutscenes that are skipped this way include:
The third cutscene above is completely avoided in Any% and All Star Maps, while the fourth cutscene above is skipped with a Map CS Skip in All Quests; Any% and All Star Maps need to progress that cutscene to allow the Dark Side version of Bastila to appear on Lehon. All other STUNT cutscenes are skipped with Map CS Skips.
Credit Underflow is a unique application of AMG that buys an item when you don’t have enough credits to afford it, giving you negative credits. To perform a Credit Underflow:
Some notes:
Credit Underflow is used at the start of All Quests to afford enough stims for the Duel Ring.
Fast Text is a glitch in KotOR in which the sound files for conversations are not properly loaded, making all dialog in conversations advance instantly with the exception of user-chosen dialog options. While Fast Text happens naturally as memory usage increases, it can also be forced with an application of AMG as follows:
This is used in All Quests in conjunction with the Yuthura XP Exploit to gain ~20000 XP in approximately 30 seconds.
The Classic Menu Glitch (sometimes called Container Menu Glitch) is an alternate way of triggering a menu glitch. It is performed by standing next to a container and attempting to loot it. Use any menu hotkey (such as Escape for Options) on the same frame that the item dialog pops up, and the item dialog should overlay itself on the menu screen.
If you open the menu too early, you can close it and attempt to open the menu again before the item dialog pops up. In this way you can “buffer” a Menu Glitch. If you open the menu too late, the item dialog will pop up as normal. Just close it and loot the container to retry the glitch.
This method of performing a Menu Glitch predated the Anywhere Menu Glitch, but it is less reliable, less flexible, and slower than the Anywhere Menu Glitch. Thus this version of Menu Glitch is now obsolete, with the exception of non-PC runs, for which AMG does not function.